


Where You Stand Silent in the Trees

by shanghai_tan



Series: Say, Hello [1]
Category: Guardians of the Galaxy (2014), Guardians of the Galaxy - All Media Types
Genre: Backstory, Character Study, First Meeting, Gen, Loosely based off the comics, animal experimentation, friendship fic, gratuitous use of imagination, mention of maintenance animals, not me, planet x, who knew an overgrown tree and a talking raccoon would be my faves
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-09
Updated: 2014-08-09
Packaged: 2018-02-12 10:30:09
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,066
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2106321
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shanghai_tan/pseuds/shanghai_tan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Rocket will tell anyone he cares to tell that he had lured the big guy from his home planet with promises of money, adventure, and excitement.</p><p>He will not tell them that he meets Groot as he is being force-fed berries, lying on his stomach because his back hurt too bad to move.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Where You Stand Silent in the Trees

The mammals chitter among themselves in their strange language, stealing glances over at the unconscious form laid out in the impromptu nest they had made for him. The Strange One looked like one of them, smelled like one of them, had fur like some of them, but he did not speak as they spoke. Where they bared their teeth, and clicked their tongues, and hissed – the Strange One made rounded sounds with his mouth like the Two-Legs. 

They do not know what to make of him.  


A meeting of the Elders is held, the younger maintenance mammals waiting, fidgety in the wings. At last the Elders call upon Wind-Favoured, their fastest flier, to Branched-Friend to inform him of the newcomer.

So it comes to be that Rocket meets his accomplice, his right-hand, and his best and closest friend in all his admittedly short lifetime. Rocket will tell anyone he cares to tell that he had lured the big guy from his home planet with promises of money, adventure, and excitement. 

He will not tell them that he meets Groot as he is being force-fed berries, lying on his stomach because his back hurt too bad to move. He will not tell them how he hadn’t even the strength to resist tendrils of twigs gently gripping onto his arms, his waist, his legs and pulling him up to face yet another unknown being. He will not tell them about the sudden spike of fear, the fight-or-flee instinct made deafening by what They had done to him, or that he had slumped in the arms of the tree and wished for death so much that he was gasping for it. 

“I am Groot.” The tree had said, that first time, eyes curious with a softness Rocket has not known in all his memory of being torn apart again and again just to be put together. 

It takes four months altogether, a good chunk of it spent gritting his teeth through the sweating and shaking of his body withdrawing from the drugs They had liked to pump into him, and he is raring to leave this place of peace and idyll harmony. 

Groot, for there is only one Groot he acknowledges despite there being a forest-full of those lumbering things, sticks close to him and in return Rocket starts to talk to Groot bit by bit. At first it’s the little things, like how the weather is, which of the animals are irritating him the most this week, and how sick he’s becoming of berries. In return, Groot shelters him when it rains, shoos the others away when Rocket starts to suffocate under their steady gazes, and takes him to where the best mushrooms grow, deep in the forest. 

He feels like an intruder in this peace. Like he taints the ground he treads on, his head full of impossible knowledge, the very core of him taken apart and remade for destruction. He knows that there is something wrong with him, something wrong in him, because his good dreams are filled with wires and metal and the sharp burnt taste of his first explosion in his mouth. He is disgusting, wretched. The only one of his kind that survived the first, second, hundredth slice of the scalpel.

When the itchy feeling in his paws becomes too great to bear, Rocket asks Groot to take him to the hill he had crash-landed in, where the great birds of this planet had plucked him from and carried him gently to the other animals. He is terrified of being rejected, and his nervousness makes his stance impatient and his voice sharp. This is definitely not the posture to take when asking for a favor, even Rocket knows this much, but he is defensive from so many months of feeling lost and out of place. 

Groot only looks at him for a long moment and curls a leafy limb around Rocket's slight shoulders until Rocket doesn't feel like he's going to vibrate out of his skin anymore.

“I am Groot.” Groot says quietly, and does a very close impression of a smile. Something eases in Rocket, and he ducks his head, the fight draining out of him all at once. 

“Yeah big guy, so you’ve said.” He says gruffly, and leans into the touch a little. 

Rocket puts together his escape pod in a week, Groot better help to him than ten men, better than a hundred. At ease for the first time in months, Rocket finds that his tongue loosens after a day of being elbows deep in wires and metal. 

“One time They shaved all my fur off to, I don’t know, get Their rocks off or something.” Rocket would say, his mouth full of pointy odds and ends while Groot propped up the underside of the pod with one arm, “It was such a bitch, I itched for a month.”

“My back aches something fierce when it rains.”

“One of Them taught me how to say something other than code and machine-talk, gave me my name ‘cause I liked blowing shit up so much in the simulations. She tried to let me out once, but she was stupid about it and They caught her. She never came back.”

“There were 88 others before me, but I guess they failed. 89th’s the charm, hey?”

And one day, with only the stars to bear witness under a rare moonless sky, he whispers- 

“They were stupid, the day I escaped. One of them left me on the table and didn’t check how much anaesthesia they shot me up with. Turns out that you shouldn’t ever make anything you wanna keep smart, because They left enough stuff around me to build a bomb. I think I got ‘em all, I didn’t check. I just left in the pod and blew the whole station once I cleared Their orbit.”

And Groot doesn’t sigh, doesn’t recoil in disgust, doesn’t do anything really. Rocket turns over, he picks out the shape of his friend easily enough, shivering slightly when a small wind picks up and ruffles at the fur on the back of his neck. There are explosions underneath his eyelids when he closes his eyes, so he doesn't.

He waits.

Finally, like the turn of an age, Groot says very gently,

“I am Groot.”

And Rocket presses his face against the dirt and closes his eyes.

**Author's Note:**

> Title taken from 'Trees' by Twenty-One Pilots
> 
> Loosely based on the comic 'Guardians of the Galaxy #14'
> 
> Thanks for reading!


End file.
